This post is a compilation of various links around News Media, Advertising, and Technology that were of interest to me as I reviewed the year past, and look forward to 2011. Sorry if the links seem a bit arbitrary – many were “filling in the gaps” of my current view of the world. Hopefully you find something of interest, if only the taxonomy :) .

The past two weeks has seen the first, sustained, clash between two ages: a new era of complete online freedom and transparency (and all that this entails, good and bad); versus the old world of secrecy, authority and control. And it’s been paralleled in a clash between a new way of doing journalism and the way the traditional, mainstream media does it.

… I have now come to the conclusion that the future of journalism will not come in any shape or form from the current established media – at least in its present form. … the future of journalism does not lie with the mainstream media.

Westbrook authored this post 2 days after he appeared on Al Jazeera with Robert Fisk – a bit of a journalistic hero of mine – on a panel discussing how WikiLeaks is challenging, and changing, the craft of journalism. The video can be viewed below:

I started with Westbrook because his voice is from a younger generation of journalists that looks to the Internet to provide a visibility and transparency that (I believe) was absent from previous forms of media and journalism. Westbrook makes the case that WikiLeaks represents a new form of journalism made possible by the Internet age, and the “complete and utter transparency” that is made possible by the Internet. He contrasts this with an older, more secretive era of both diplomacy and journalism.

Jay Rosen provides a very interesting angle on the WikiLeaks phenomena in the video below:

Rosen’s line of thought is not so much whether WikiLeaks is a journalistic force for good or evil (so to speak). Rather, he asks the important question of why WikiLeaks as an organization arose as a trusted source for whistleblowers in the first place? Quoting Rosen:

One of the reasons (why whistleblowers trust WikiLeaks with their information) is that the legitimacy of the press itself is in doubt in the minds of the leakers. And there’s good reason for that. Because while we have what proports to be a watchdog press, we also have … the clear record of the watchdog presses’ failure … to provide a check on power …

So I think it’s a mistake to try and reckon with WikiLeaks and what it’s about, without including in the frame the spectacular failures of the watchdog press over the past 10, 20, 30 years, but especially recently.

And so without this legitimacy crisis in mainstream American journalism, the leakers may not be so included to trust an upstart like Julian Assange and … WikiLeaks.

When the United States is able to go to war behind a phony case. When something like that happens, and the Congress is fooled, and a fake case is presented to the United Nations. And a war follows, and hundreds of thousands of people die, and the stated rationale turns out to be false. The legitimacy crisis extends from the Bush government itself to the American state as a whole, and the American press, and the international system. Because all of them failed at one of the most important things that a government by consent can do – which is reason-giving.

That’s powerful stuff.

Glenn Greenwald on Mainstream Media reporting of WikiLeaks

No journalist, however, has done more to expose the conflicted relationship of mainstream media (in the US) and WikiLeaks that Salon’s Glenn Greenwald – who also gets my vote as the top journalist writing for a US media outlet.

It’s hard to even know where to start to cover the excellent journalism Greenwald has done in holding mainstream media accountable for their inaccurries and mistruths regarding WikiLeaks. Here’s just a sampling of my favorite Greenwald pieces surrounding WikiLeaks:

Shameful Assange Media Interview award – CNN’s Atika Shubert

But my vote for most shameful Assange media interview of 2010 goes to CNN’s Atika Shubert who (briefly) interviewed Assange in October 2010. First, the clip:

This interview was conducted right at the time of the WikiLeaks’ release of the Iraq War Logs – an event of enormous import. In this interview, Shubert employs (to my mind) the age-old technique of attempting to discredit the messenger when the message is unpalatable. It’s shameful journalism, and Assange was exactly right to walk away from the interview. I thought he handled the situation with dignity and grace.

In Summary – the birth of a genuinely accountable news media?

I believe WikiLeaks sets a new example and ideal for transparency and accountability in both investigative journalism and world affairs. It’s an organization that could not have been born prior to the current Internet era, and its emergence is being resisted by entities – political and journalistic – that for far too long have not been held accountable to public scrutiny. It’s a very encouraging and hopeful phenomenon IMO.

Fascinating. So first I just came across the website Newspaper Death Watch, and I must say I find its perspective fascinating. Secondly, while on the site, I came across an interview with two documentary filmmakers – Adam Chadwick and Bill Loerch – who are producing a documentary called Fit to Print, about the decline of the Newspaper industry in the U.S., I believe with a specific focus on the New York Times. Anyway, here’s the clip:

In a recent post, I highlighted a presentation delivered by Leonard Brody on Change and Entrepreneuralism. Here’s another presentation given by Brody in January 2009 in Qatar on how Journalism and News Media are changing in a 24×7 connected world:

Brody is the co-founder of NowPublic, which was recently acquired by the Clarity Digital Group which owns and operates Examiner.com.

An interesting post by Alfred Hermida – Professor of Journalism at UBC, and former multimedia journalist at the BBC – on how managing User-generated content is now a core part of the BBC’s news gathering operations/workflow. Hermida references a study that was presented by Claire Wardle, Andrew Williams and Karin Wahl-Jorgensen at the Future of Journalism conference in Cardiff.

Quoting Hermida:

The BBC has a dedicated UGC hub that has grown from three people in 2005 to 23 now, and it is physically located by newsgathering, at the heart of the corporation’s news operations.

The researchers found that the UGC hub trawl through comments and submissions for news content and for eyewitnesses to pass on to radio and TV as potential interviewees.

… The researchers concluded that UGC has become institutionalised at the BBC as a form of newsgathering, consolidating the existing relationship between journalists and the audience.

The transformation of news media will continue to see dramatic changes to traditional newsroom editorial workflows, and it’s interesting to see how organizations like the BBC are implementing change in their operations.